Today we broke another data milestone when we crossed 15 million data points in the Safecast database. You may recall that it was only June 2013 when we broke 10 Million and October 2011 when first hit 1 million so momentum is picking up thanks in no small part to many proud new bGeigie Nano…
Continue Reading "15 Million Data Points and Democracy Now" »
Let’s make it clear: the release of radioactive contamination from the Fukushima NPP to the environment — the air, the land, and the ocean — is a massive disaster. There’s no other way to describe it. Radiation in the air spread far and wide, and was even detectable, though barely, on other continents, while radiation…
Lately we’ve seen a spate of Fukushima-related hoaxes which have gone viral, one of which claims that the Russian navy detected two underground atomic explosions at Fukushima on Dec 31, prompting the Russian gov’t to order protective measures. We’ve gotten a lot of emails about it from people who are worried, and who have also…
Continue Reading "The Fukushima "Underground Nuclear Explosions" Hoax" »
[UPDATE 3/2014: The CDPH did their own study and confirmed our findings below, the report of their findings can be found here] In December this rather shocking video titled “Fukushima radiation hits San Francisco! (Dec 2013)” was posted to YouTube To date it’s been viewed almost half a million times, and countless articles have been…
We frequently get emails from people traveling to Japan asking if it’s safe to eat the food in country, for fear of contamination from Fukushima and thought the answer we’ve been sending out recently would be helpful/informative for others as well. [Edited to clarify that we think examining the risks in a scientific sense alone…
Safecast was started because of a lack of what we considered to be useful data. We’ve talked before about the difference between correct and useful information and this is a perfect example. We saw data published with no information about how readings were taken, or where. We saw data published that was questionable, but without…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vZUg1HEKI4 Recently, we held a build your own bGeigie Nano workshop at our offices in Shibuya, Tokyo. We’d been talking to the great folks at Vice Japan for a while and they decided they wanted to join the workshop and build a geiger counter for themselves. We were fortunate that schedules worked out and Yuka…
Continue Reading "Vice Japan Covers Recent bGeigie Build Event" »
Another milestone for us today – this one quite significant. Until now we’ve been able to measure the exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant but we haven’t been inside the actual grounds – having quite literally run into the gates around the facility. This week some of our volunteers were able to bring…
Safecaster Ryan recently put on his heavy coat and took a trip to Antarctica, brining along a trusty bGeigie and took these readings – making it official that Safecast has measured all seven continents! Nothing scary or unexpected here – everything is around 40 to 50 cpm / 0.11 to 0.13 μSv – but exciting to check off…
As you may have heard the exclusion (evacuation) zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant continues to be adjusted to allow people into areas with lower radiation levels, and move them out of areas with higher levels. There has been no easy way to see what these areas look like so Safecast volunteer Azby created this…